Stella Glow Review

I have certain expectations when a game is widely recommended and the company behind it couldn’t be bothered to show people that it exists.  Even though there doesn’t seem to be a logical correlation, in my experience that means it’s a dominating force exemplifying its genre of gaming, as seen with the Senran Kagura games, Xenoblade, The King of Fighters 11 and Sengoku Basara.  With that mindset and a very nice demo showcasing the entirety of the opening stages, I may have gone into Stella Glow with expectations just a little too high and I found that whether or not it’s something worth playing is tricky enough of a question to be worth a review.

The backstory to Stella Glow’s world is exposited in its opening scene.  A nondescript god stole the ability to sing from humanity and attempted to destroy humanity with an army of angels.  As Shin Megami Tensei, Xenoblade and Mortal Kombat have shown us, god’s a jerk.  A fabled hero named Elcrest used something called the conductor’s power to utilize five witches and their magic singing in order to defeat god.  Witches are the only ones capable of singing and using magic thanks to five magic jewels called Qualia, one for each of the four basic elements and one for time.

Thousands of years later, you play as Alto, a young teen amnesiac found in a lake who discovers he has the power of the conductor and his friend Lisette inherits the water qualia to become the water witch.  Both find themselves joining the royal knights of the local kingdom of Regnant, led by the handsome white knight Klaus, to combat the posse of unruly-looking warriors called the Harbingers.  Led by the time witch Hilda, the Harbingers travel the world using her song of ruin to trap people in crystal, including Alto and Lisette’s village.  Their motivations are a mystery until a long ways in and you know it won’t be an easy fight since they have Keith Silverstein.

His spear is named Vergil.

In order to reverse the crystallization, the knights travel to the corners of the earth to find the other three witches so the four can perform a stupendous quartet song called The Anthem.  Sadly, tragically, it doesn’t sound a thing like Good Charlotte.  Every step of the way the Harbingers try to get to the witches first and kill them so the anthem can’t be performed.

Gee, an epic RPG where you gotta collect four treasures of the elements.  I’ve never heard THAT one before.

They’re inside people in this case, but the overall concept stands.

I won’t go very far into the plot’s intrigue because, to be honest, Stella Glow’s plot is one of the most by the numbers, predictable and cliché-heavy I have played in a long time.  With the exception of a few aspects of a certain major plot turning point, every single thing that happens has been done before many times in other JRPGs and Japanese media with very little to mix up the scenario.  Even within its own story, gathering the witches follows a bit of a formula, making it feel as though you’re doing the same story over and over again.  As a story for the seasoned gamer, players might be disappointed with Stella Glow, but what it lacks in plot it makes up for in the characters.

As the knights travel the world they meet a lot of different characters to add to their party.  You’d be forgiven for thinking that the characters are just as generic as the plot at a glance as they all seem specifically designed to appeal to certain kinds of people.  There are cutesy young girls ranging from clumsy, motherly, childish and eccentric while the guys have bishies ranging from haughty, smug, smart and one is a huggable sensitive giant.  Rest assured, there are actual characters behind each of them and they aren’t as samey as the plot is.

For such a large party of traveling companions it’s admirable that the game is able to give them all an equal amount of attention in the story and have them all compliment each other by acting as foils and support.  Each one has their own personalities, character flaws, hidden depths and motivations, but to see most of that you’ll have to spend time with them.  Much like games with relationships values like the Persona games post-Persona 2, you’re given free time in between missions to spend time with members of your party.  You can also use up the time to explore for items or do part time jobs for cash, but you’ll have such an abundance of those things before long that it’s far more important to spend time with others.

Spending time with a squadmate gives them new abilities and moves to use in battle, which is the best thing you can have to get some real money and items anyway.  This is doubly true for the witches, whom you’ll definitely want to spend time with because they can use songs, which are abilities in a class of their own.

The free time events are where Stella Glow shines brightest.  They can be heartwarming, funny, adorable, dramatic and everything in between.  They all help establish a better connection with the people you fight with, which I always appreciate.

There’s only one character in Stella Glow I consider a bad character and it is unfortunately a pretty important one: Alto, the main character.  Other characters can hold my interest, but when the main character is the worst character it undermines the whole story.  Alto isn’t bad moralistically.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite.  Alto is a part of the plot, and as I said, the plot is generic, so to fit into that, Alto is incredibly boring.  He is a nice goody-two-shoes Kirito-style Marty Stu who doesn’t have any real struggle in the story, doesn’t seem to have any hobbies or interests and can get on the good side of every witch, which kind of gives off a sexist alpha male vibe if you ask me, but the game doesn’t push it.  There is next to nothing to him other than being the hero.  There’s a point in the story you might expect him to change a little, but he never does.  He’s bland through and through.

It’s not like a goody two-shoes character has to be boring.  Asuka in Senran Kagura is a great example, as she has her own moral philosophies she has to think about and has to learn about others in order to understand people to make friends with them.  Alto has a little bit of the learning part with certain characters in their free time events, but it’s never developed enough, especially since you can run out of free time before you finish them.

Like a lot of Atlus games, characters are enhanced by the voice acting.  Stella Glow has a lot of the usual recognizable voice actors like Matt Mercer, Melissa Fahn, Kyle Hebert and Keith honkin' Silverstein, for a start.  Lesser known is Alto’s voice actor, Robbie Daymond, who does a good job with what he’s given, but not even the best voice actors in the world could make Alto any less boring.

My favorite actresses in particular are Christie Cabanos, Cindy Robinson and Christina Vee.  Cabanos gives Lisette a sweet purehearted charm, Robinson is great at more firey and mature characters and Vee makes the shy, devoted, cardboard box-wearing go-getting ninja absolutely hilarious and adorable.

But let's be real.  The best character is Popo's badass war hog Bubu, who, like Senran Kagura's Bebe-tan, is so good he doesn't even fight because that would make things too easy.

The characters are enough to give Stella Glow its own identity within the derivative plot, but if you were expecting some mix-ups in the gameplay department, think again.  The gameplay is pretty much like any other tactical RPG.  You take turns based on character stats, use skills and items, get experience, have advantages when attacking from the sides or behind and equip everyone for better stats and effects.  If you’ve played a game like Final Fantasy Tactics or the developer’s previous Luminous Arc games, you know what to expect here.  I don’t think that’s inherently a bad thing because it means the experienced gamers this is targeted to can jump right in without having to learn much of any new rules or mechanics.

The differences Stella Glow has from other games of its kind lie in its presentation quirks and the songs alongside that.  The entire party shares a song gauge represented by Alto’s Song Stone, essentially a magic conductor’s wand.  The witches can use that power to sing their songs in battle.  We don’t get to hear the likes of Cindy Robinson or Stephanie Sheh sing, although I’m sure they can.  The game uses the Japanese voices for the singing.

A witch’s song has to be unlocked from their heart through a process Alto can perform called tuning.  As part of tuning, Alto (and the party) go into the witch’s heart Psychonauts-style and have a battle with shadow visages to resolve the parts of their hearts that are holding them back, like fear and bad memories.  These mindscapes aren’t even on the same level of Psychonauts though, as they all use the same terrain and overall structure for much less visual variety, a recurring issue in the game.

There are two kinds of songs each witch can use.  The quickest to use are small medleys that only take up one or two stocks of the song stone and have an effect over a wide area, including buffs, debuffs, damage and healing.

The much more powerful ones are the conductor songs, which use up four stocks.  For that, Alto has to stab the song stone into the qualia in the witch’s chest to initiate a proper song with instrumental accompaniment.  These songs cover the entire field, override the background music, the witch sings it continuously for a few turns and each time it’s their turn while they’re singing, they add another effect.  As intended, they are great boons of power that can turn the tables in a tight spot and all of them sound grandiose to further emphasize that power.  The songs themselves are varying styles of J-pop music reflecting the witch’s personality.  The only disappointment is that in order to get a second conductor song for a witch, you have to max out your relationship with her, which as mentioned earlier, may not happen and it’s even less likely you’ll get all of them on one playthrough.  You can get them all on the game’s New Game Plus that triples the free time you get, but by that point you’ll probably be done with the game for a while.

The song mechanic is very competently executed from an aesthetic standpoint.  That the witches are the only ones that can sing while the rest of the world is deprived of it makes the color and vibrancy they give off have more of an impact.  It has the power of song without being a musical.  With that said, I would not recommend the soundtrack as a whole anytime soon.  Like many games these days, pre-orders for Stella glow came with the soundtrack, but only with the witch’s songs because they are the only part of the game's music that stands out.  Everything else is, like Alto and the plot, generic and forgettable.  Not poorly made or distracting, just plain, and I don't think that was an intentional design choice to try to make the witch songs comparatively better.

The other presentation quirk Stella Glow has is its fighting animations.  When using skills (including songs), action cuts to the chibi versions of the characters performing them, much like Fire Emblem.  Not only are the chibis just plain cute, but the detailed movements, expressions, camera angles and snappy voice acting add to their charm and sense of impact.

Some of my favorite moves include Hip Drop, where Lisette accidentally sends herself flying upward and lands hip first on the enemy, and Beesting, where Nonoka trips, bounces on her cardboard helmet and accidentally stabs the enemy before falling over.  Just about all of fire witch Sakuya’s moves are great too.

Also like Fire Emblem, the animations can be turned off on the fly, which is good because there is a lot of dreadful repetition.  Settings change, but overall structure does not.  Beating down enemies to get from point A to point B to beat down more enemies is the name of the game here and Stella Glow gets its challenge from swarming you with weak enemies and the occasional more powerful enemy.  That can be a legitimate challenge, having to maneuver around enemies, activate songs at the opportune time and equip everyone with the right items for the situation, but there isn’t much variety outside of that.  You can count the number of unique enemies on two hands because most of them are palette swaps for a different element or different strength level, essentially meaning you’re fighting the same enemies over and over for the entire game.  Boss characters change things up a good bit, but they can only offset the repetition so much.

Making matters worse is the length of these missions badly damages the story’s sense of pacing.  Missions can take over an hour even if you skip the animations and gets even worse when a mission enters a second phase and swarms the map with even more enemies.  Couple that with the limited enemy variety and you have a monotonous journey ahead.  There was some fat that needed to be cut here.  This game does not feel like it needed to be over 50 hours long.  When I’m exclaiming “finally” instead of “victory!” something has gone wrong.  That goes double for a point in the story where you have to arbitrarily revisit past areas before the plot goes anywhere.

A lot of the game overall feels lacking in polish.  It’s standard for a visual novel-style game to use static character portraits with nothing but the expressions changing and the occasional artwork, but Stella Glow’s presentation of its dialogues outside of battle only goes for that minimum and doesn’t do much beyond that.  I wouldn’t mind normally, but story sequences in between missions are so long it gets boring to look at and the dialogue often feels like it needs some enforcement of the “show, don’t tell” rule.

If you look at Blazblue or Senran Kagura, they have little visual effects for more outward expressions and actions that can contribute a lot to giving those static images a sense of movement.  Not even the 3D effect is used for anything more but making the HUD pop out.  Stella Glow gives me the impression that the only thing it benefited from the 3DS over the original Nintendo DS was the voice acting and battle animations.

I'd sure retreat if Kirk Thornton threatened me.

At the end of the day, Stella Glow is pretty much your average strategy RPG that doesn’t strive to be much of anything more.  All its pieces are competently done, but apart from the characters and singing concept, little about it stands out, but that might be enough for some gamers.  Stella Glow isn’t as polished as other games in the genre, but it will probably appeal to certain players in a “X, but with Y” sort of way.  In the same way I like Sleeping Dogs because it’s Grand Theft Auto, but with kung fu fighting, I know people who would like that Stella Glow is a tactical RPG, but with a cute moe squad (of both guys and girls) and a musical spin on things.  If you think you might be one of those people, Stella Glow is worth a try.  If not, there are games like it I'd recommend sooner.  I give Stella Glow a 6.5 out of 10.